Week 2

Lecture

So we learn in details about design research and how design can be affected by different contexts. Basically research about the target audience should be made very in depth for what you are designing for or else you could end up insulting people without even knowing, or the people of the area might not understand the meaning of certain design because of their culture or also considering the thing you design ended up being expensive and has been made in a country where most people are not very rich then the target audience might not get access to it

Brief

We also got a briefing on the first project which is I Am Amplifier and it's to study existing projects/ advertising and change it's context to address the current concern of the design industry based on the question of "What should be the designer's role and responsibility" in a typographic poster

Group Work

Here's my thought on the group work that I made with Jin Yi, Shao Ru and Jia Xuan

3 Ways good design makes you happy

The video is about design and beauty and how it can communicates emotion and how people like things that looks neat and beautiful. It also talks about how context affect the way people think like for example walking on a plank which is on the ground and walking on a plank which is 30m above the ground and another example the guy gave was that 2 groups of people tries to solve the same problem but the group that was given candy and were happier and more comfortable could solve the problem. The video also talks about 3 things that affects the way people perceive things, visceral, behavioural and reflective.

From the video a designer’s role could be:

1. to design things that are aesthetically pleasing and useful instead of just beautiful

2. to design things considering human emotions and perhaps put a relatable story to it

3. to consider context properly before designing

4. to understand the target audience point of view when designing (because they will prefer things that will make their image look better)

Things that I disagree from the video were:

1. that a designer should not only focus on the beauty of something but also the message it give and it’s usage (juice presser mentioned in the video)

2. not everybody would prefer beauty over practical

The thing that made me want to research further is how people perceive design differently and how context changes our way of think.

We then discussed and compiled our thoughts and we put them all in a mindmap for submission

Other Videos I Watched

Design for simplicity

In the video the guy talks about trying to understand simplicity because he finds that we humans love complexity and he also do complex designs. So he studied it from a different perspective where he found that children would prefer a bigger cookie compared to a small one, however they will prefer a small pile of clothes to fold compared to a big pile. So he concluded that simplicity is just about enjoying life better with less pain.

From the video a designer’s role could be

1. to design things that will make life more enjoyable

2. to know when to chose between complexity and simplicity

3. to explore a problem or situation from different perspective to have a better understanding

One thing that I’m interested in researching further is to know when to choose between simplicity and complexity

Great design is serious not solemn

This Video is about design being something fun which she described as serious and not serious which she described as solemn. So basically it means that a good designer need to have fun and play around with stupid things and learn from those things. All of the woman’s greatest success were things that she enjoyed doing until they became too popular that she got bored with them and started new things that were fun to her and also became a hit. I can relate this video to the 3 Ways good design makes you happy as in that video the guy talked about how people are able to solve problem when they feel happier.

From the video a designer’s role could be:

1. to have fun when designing and come up with great original ideas

2. to be able to try new things continuously and not only stick to one idea

Make Data more Human

The video is about making data more human by attaching memories, emotion or telling a story through it so that it does not look like a privacy issue, something that you will feel uncomfortable to share. Through the video we can see how data can be important to understand people.

From the video a designer’s role could be:

1. to put human connections in a context to give a design value and importance

2. to find new interesting ways to represent data

Art in the age of machine intelligence

The video is about how AI visualize things and turn this into moving art pieces that creates a dream like effect. The idea of the video came from how it would be like if an AI had memories like us humans.

From the video a designer’s role could be:

1. to make exaggerated connections and try make things no one else would think of.

2. to not limit ourselves to a paper or a monitor and try to think more about “space” and environment.

Try research more on graphic design in a large space/ environment

Articles I read

A New Manifesto Outlines One Designers Mission To Redefine Our Environmental Future

The manifesto is about designers need to focus more on environmental issues and design sustainable things that will not damage the planet. The author provide solutions to different fields.

I really like how in the article it talks about how the designer design eco-friendly stuffs and how they deal with wastes. It's definitely something easy to do that anybody can start to practice. But however changing the mindset of people through just a manisfesto won't work. I do agree that as designers we need to think more about the environment because we are the planners and all and we can make a change but i think to make a greater impact we should also try to include messages about the environmental issues in our designs.

One role of a designer that i could think of from this article is that a designer need to be able to see through different perspectives and think critically with this information.

The Lancaster Care Charter

This article is about designers not doing what we were supposed to which is care. The authors described 2 types of caring, "design for care" and "care for design".

According to this article designers should be caring, we should know what's impact our designs are going to have on the environment, the people, things around us, we should basically take in consideration everything. Moreover we also need to be able to address attacking messages in a modest way. We should be the bridge that brings meaningful content to our audience in a way that it will not vex them

This article also said that sometimes we need to think that we will not be able to solve the problem and i really like that because design is problem solving but sometimes we need to accept when a problem is beyond our own capabilites or this could make things worst.

From this article i can say that a designer need to stand in the middle of everything (psychology, philosophy, science, politics,... ) so that he knows all the consequences of his actions. And also a designer need to think a lot so that nothing has been neglected, so it's better not to rush projects and research well and connect the dots before realizing something.

However i do not totally agree that a designer need to always be modest and humble to not hurt people because sometimes being rude can be used to create a bigger impact but yeah not always.

Bibliography

Clarke, R., 2020. A New Manifesto Outlines One Designers Mission To Redefine Our Environmental Future. [online] Forbes. Available at: <https://www.forbes.com/sites/roddyclarke/2020/01/29/a-new-manifesto-outlines-one-designers-mission-to-redefine-our-environmental-future/amp/> [Accessed 29 January 2020].

Rodgers, Paul & Innella, Giovanni & Bremner, Craig & Coxon, Ian & Cara, & Broadley, & Cadamuro, Alessia & Carleklev, Stephanie & Chan, Kwan & Clive, & Dilnot, & Fathers, James & Fennell, Jac & Fremantle, Chris & French, Tara & Henriques, Diogo & Jones, Peter & Kettley, Richard & Kettley, Sarah & Winton, E.. (2019). The Lancaster Care Charter. Design Issues. 35. 73-77. 10.1162/desi_a_00522.